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Potato Chowder

A thick soup made with dried potatoes, onion, salt pork, flour, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Chowder

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Soak the dried potatoes and onion in enough water to cover overnight.

  2. Cook the soaked potatoes and onion until tender, adding more water if necessary.

Make the white sauce

  1. Cut the salt pork into small pieces and fry until brown and crisp.

  2. Add flour to the fat in the pan and stir until the mixture bubbles.

  3. Gradually add the milk to create a white sauce.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the white sauce with the cooked potatoes, season with salt and pepper, and heat before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried potato
Forms the body of the chowder and thickens it as the starch softens during cooking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor, and its rendered fat carries the flour for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce when cooked in fat until it bubbles.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving the chowder its creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the flour and fat. Milk should be added gradually while stirring so the starch disperses evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pork, flour, pepper, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pork, flour, pepper, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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